Everybody is talking about Charles Murray's book Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. My review is in the February issue of The American Conservative, where I mention a comparison that isn't getting much talked about: if you think the American white working class is deteriorating, what about their British distant cousins?
When British center-leftists like John Maynard Keynes and William Beveridge were planning the post-war welfare state, they were worried when the eugenics-inspired rules they'd wanted were left out by Parliament at the last moment. Keynes and his friends feared that without eugenicist limitations upon welfare, within a few generations the country would be overrun by chavs. From "How Eugenics Poisoned the Welfare State" in The Spectator in 2009:
When British center-leftists like John Maynard Keynes and William Beveridge were planning the post-war welfare state, they were worried when the eugenics-inspired rules they'd wanted were left out by Parliament at the last moment. Keynes and his friends feared that without eugenicist limitations upon welfare, within a few generations the country would be overrun by chavs. From "How Eugenics Poisoned the Welfare State" in The Spectator in 2009:
A century ago many leading leftists subscribed to the vile pseudo-science of eugenics, writes Dennis Sewell, and the influence of that thinking can still be seen today...
William Beveridge, later to emerge as the midwife of the post-1945 welfare settlement, was also very active in the eugenics movement at this time. Today, Beveridge is generally portrayed as a kindly, avuncular figure, one almost dripping with compassion and benevolence. But his roots were in a particularly hardline strand of eugenics. He argued in 1909 that ‘those men who through general defects are unable to fill such a whole place in industry, are to be recognised as “unemployable”. They must become the acknowledged dependents of the State... but with complete and permanent loss of all citizen rights — including not only the franchise but civil freedom and fatherhood.’ And that, except for the loss of fatherhood, has effectively been his legacy.
Eugenics was no quickly passing fad. The Eugenics Society reached its peak, in terms of membership, during the 1930s, and the cusp of the following decade saw the zenith of its prestige. The economist John Maynard Keynes served on the society’s governing council and was its director from 1937 to 1944. Once again, this was no casual hobby. As late as 1946 Keynes was still describing eugenics as ‘the most important and significant branch of sociology’.
The most likely reason Keynes stopped giving pro-eugenics speeches after 1946 was because he was dead.
Working alongside Keynes at this time as the editor of Eugenics Review was Richard Titmuss, soon afterwards to become an influential professor at the London School of Economics working on social policy, and who would ultimately be dubbed ‘the high priest of the welfare state’.
It was during the late 1930s that much of the detailed planning for the welfare state was carried out. And a good deal of it was undertaken at meetings of the Eugenics Society. On the evening that the House of Commons met to debate the Beveridge Report, Beveridge himself went off to address an audience of eugenicists at the Mansion House. He knew he was in for a rough ride. His scheme of family allowances had originally been devised within the Eugenics Society with a graduated rate, which paid out more to middle-class parents and very little to the poor. The whole point was to combat the eugenicists’ great bugbear — the differential birth rate between the classes. However, the government that day had announced a uniform rate. Beveridge was sympathetic to the complaints of his audience and hinted that a multi-rate system might well be introduced at a later date.
Of course, today we all know that welfare couldn't have dysgenic and/or dyscultural effects. In fact, Science tells us that welfare state Britain couldn't possibly wind up after a few generations with lots of anti-intellectual yobs who think that studying is only for toffs and poofters, that toffs are poofters. How pseudoScientific Keynes was! He must have been a poofter toff himself to be so pseudoScientific.
In further fact, we all know from reading nice people like Paul Krugman who worship Keynes that Keynes and his friends were nice people too and couldn't possibly have ever had such thoughts. Keynes' head would have exploded from the not-niceness if this idea had ever even occurred to him.
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80 comments:
Because it has so few jobs?
> Of course, today we all know that welfare couldn't have dysgenic and/or dyscultural effects.
Thank god, because it's incredibly important that dysfunctional people be allowed to reproduce tons of times each. Without that, human life can't go on - it's not worth it. I'm sure we'd all rather be tortured to death a hundred thousand times.
I listened to Chesterton's book against eugenics - well, part of it. Same old boring stuff that you always see: he drones about how vexatious eugenics is - admittedly true - without addressing whether (indefinite amounts of) dysgenesis are even worse. I was like, 'attention, Grover Chesterton... apply some basic logic to this'.
read peter hitchens's mail column/blog and the 'abolition of britian' also Baroness Cox.
My stepfather believed - perhaps still believes at 94 - that people should have to get a license to have children. Eugenics-lite variations were long popular.
Keynes was anti-scots-irish too, no?
Beware Steve. When your readership figures out that "poofter" is British pejorative meaning "fag," ie, homosexual, I think you will have problems.
They are also less religious.
their elite have been 'at it' a lot longer than here - eg the fabians, bloomsbury group ,etc.
Poofters are also not popular among Australian professors of philosophy.
It always cracks me up when people refer to eugenics as pseudo science. As if in order to qualify as science something must also uphold certain moral principles....
"if you think the American white working class is deteriorating, what about their British distant cousins?"
Problem is they are no longer working class. They are shirking or jerking class.
One reason for the rot is maybe Anglo culture of individualism. Continental Europeans are more communal-minded whereas Anglos, especially with infusion of American pop culture, are more individualistic. In the past, Anglo individualism was balanced by hierarchy, class, and values, but all those things are gone.
So, all that is left is individualism without direction or values. If there were no welfare state, individuals would at least learn to be responsible, save, and take care of themselves. But with welfare state, we have something like nanny state individualism: people who never grow up and take responsibility but act like spoiled little kids throwing tantrums.
It is a country where many 17 year old girls aim to get pregnant so that they can get a council flat and then aim to have another to get a bigger place.
"It always cracks me up when people refer to eugenics as pseudo science. As if in order to qualify as science something must also uphold certain moral principles...."
It, like anything else, CAN BE pseudo-science. Nazis for instance. The thing is the liberals want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
In fact, just because some eugenicists were wrong doesn't mean every eugenicist idea is wrong.
What's ironic is affluent liberals practice a form of elitgenics. It's not like Amy Chua married a Mexican truck driver.
I think maybe one problem is lack of cultural leadership by white elites to white masses. Most people of any society are mediocre and meant to follow. They don't know how to think, lead, create, imagine, or whatever. They need to be told what to do, what to think, what to feel,etc.
In the past, white elites felt culturally, historically, racially, and spiritually connected to the rest of the population. So, they admonished the lower elements; they led the masses to the higher path; they created national/patriotic/communal culture for all the people to share.
But white elites are now globalists and have cut their ties with the white masses. If anything, white elites, via pop culture industry and other rot, are feeding their people poison. And since not-too-bright white masses are no longer connected to or led by white elites, they are like lost sheep. Sheep without shepherd are bound to fall away from the flock.
There is political correctness to control the populace, but it's soulless and pushes stuff like 'diversity' and 'national/racial shame' that only demoralizes white masses even more.
Traditionally, the elites used to say, 'we are a great proud people and so be a credit to your race, culture, and people cuz otherwise you bring shame to your race.' But now, the white elites use political correctness to tell the white masses, 'shame on you for your whiteness and so be sure to do whatever to undermine your own culture, heritage, etc, cuz THAT is progressive'. Even white masses who resist political correctness fall by the wayside since they aren't very bright and have no elites to guide them, lead them, teach them, etc. And so we have so many white nationalist types into tattoos, piercing, awful metal music, gun worship, etc. So many white rightists one meets on facebook are just sooooo pathetic.
Old Britain
Changing Britain
Thatcher Britain
Dead Britian
Sailer says the British underclass rejected traditional hierarchical culture as too effete and gay, but there is more to the story.
Though rebellion from below was true enough, there was also an even greater rebellion from within the elite itself. Christopher Hitchens was not atypical of his generation. Born into privilege but dillydallying with radicalism and new culture. In some ways, the rejection of traditionalism happened first with the elites and then flowed down to the masses. Many educated elites were leftists, Marxist sympathizers, Jazz fans, decadents, and etc. They wanted to maintain their power and privilege but they also to feel free; and they wanted to be rid of the stigma of the 'oppressive and repressed class'. They wanted to be liberated from their own class strictures. This was understandable since traditional British society was indeed too proper. (Ironically, one thing many elites do cling to is a kind of apologetic good mannersy-ness. After London Riots, elite journalists wrote in a style that was noblesse obligey and condescendingly apologetic/sympathetic.)
Indeed even in the 70s and early 80s, you could find working class Brits who are actually culturally more conservative than members of elites. Thatcher came from grocer family, but she believed in Old Britain(in her own way). In fact, it was the elites who really hated her. Many Brit masses actually liked her.
The elites themselves got tired of being proper, uptight, hoity toity, and etc, especially when so many cool and radical things seem to be happening in France(cinema), Italy(fashion), America(movies and music and sports), etc. They got tired of British provincialism, especially after the lost of empire. At least the empire made Brits feel important around the world. After the empire was lost, British elites, so used to feeling important, felt like backwater nobodies. Their class status/national identity didn't matter all that much anymore, and so they rejected British traditionalism.
Of course, since the elites had education and means, their rejection of the old didn't mean rejection of intellectualism, learning, and etc. But when elites no longer believed in old/traditional culture, there was no reason for the masses to believe in it or respect it either. Why respect elites who wanna be 'part of the people', at least ideologically and pop-culturally? Queen Elizabeth gave MBE's to the Beatles. Princess Di was a pop culture junkie. When the Royal princess was acting like that, why should the masses be any different?
But here's the thing..
When an smart and educated person acts the clown, it's an act to a large extent.He's really not a clown.
But when a poor dumb person acts the clown, clown act becomes the only thing he knows.
Maybe the British elites got dumber too over the centuries. Though there were great families like Huxleys, the fact is many elites married other elites who were born into privilege. Since upper crust married other upper crust based on status, looks, and etc, they were bound to become more mediocre over the ages.
Unlike new capitalist elites who rose by success in business or some demanding field, old elites maintained power by blood lineage and connections. Consider the film THE SERVANT. The aristocrat guy is a real dumbass. Indeed, his servant is smarter and understands power more than him.
LIFE AND DEATH IN LONG ISLAND. Maybe this movie gives us a clue as to what happened to British elites. They too couldn't resist the new funnery. This movie reminded me of Brian Epstein. He was a born to a rich Jewish family, and Epstein was into classical music, high culture, and didn't care for rock n roll at all. But when someone asked for a Beatles record at Epstein's family music store, Epstein decided to check out the band at the local club. A gay man, he fell head over heels with John Lennon. By falling in love in Lennon the rocker, Epstein fell in love with rock culture. In an earlier age, he might have had to keep it under wraps or reject it as wrong, wrong, wrong--like the guy in AGE OF INNOCENCE doesn't abandon his world to go with the woman he truly loves; instead, he does the 'right thing' and marries Winona Ryder and lives the rest of his life as a good husband/father all his life.
But in the new world, Epstein could say 'what the hell', immerse himself in pop music and chase after Lennon. It was like the BLUE ANGEL SYNDROME but without the guilt and disgrace. What disgrace when Her Majesty herself would become a Beatles fan?
There's something like that in LOLITA too. As Freud and Beavis and Butthead said, 'boing'.
7 up, 14 up, 21 up, etc give us a pretty good glimpse of the changes that happened to Britain.
Is anyone required to be sterilized in the US or the UK? Back in my country of origin, schitzofrenics had to be sterilized by law.
Does the mainstream really consider it more humane to let an addict leave a new severally disabled baby in the hospital every year, than to tie the addict's tubes without her consent after, oh I don't know, the little victim #3?
"Is anyone required to be sterilized in the US or the UK? Back in my country of origin, schitzofrenics had to be sterilized by law.
Does the mainstream really consider it more humane to let an addict leave a new severally disabled baby in the hospital every year, than to tie the addict's tubes without her consent after, oh I don't know, the little victim #3?"
Very, very rarely is anyone sterlized in this country though it does happen. It has been too closely associated with nazism, even though Eugenics here predated nazism by more than half a century.
Yup, Brits used to take this all serious (eugenics). They had Alan Turing sterilized, right? Talk about your "law-and-order liberals"...
Now I am wondering how Keynes would've felt about that Turing business. In the long run we're all gay and castrated I guess
Tangential, but I love that one sentence summary of a life that seems mandatory in Brit-written obituaries. An excellent example (this was merely a good one) is P. Brimelow's obituary of Reagan.
"
Ronald Reagan, who died on Saturday, was the greatest American president of the twentieth century."
There is something almost haiku-ish about the form. Name, subordinate clause, major clause.
1) The welfare state on its own doesn't do it - the welfare state started in 1946 but the white underclass only started to form in the 80s. What triggered the creation of the white underclass was the welfare state in conjunction with mass unemployment which was a result of immigration and offshoring.
2) Continuous dumbing down of the education system to hide racial disparities - illiteracy now at 20% and climbing - that dates back twenty-ish years.
3) The overturning of traditional ideas by the 60s liberal elite and much more critically their refusal to admit the now overwhelming evidence they were wrong.
4) Inability of the white working / underclass to escape black gangsta culture and their gradual adoption of it for self-defence.
5) Once a welfare underclass forms it rapidly gets worse through inbreeding and peer pressure.
I'm a Brit living in South Africa and the UK. I suspect it's because we don't have an empire any more and only a vestigial military in which to dissipate the energy of our indigenous youth from the lower orders.
That combined with lack of structure and discipline in lives, the all encompassing effete liberal Zeitgeist, the sclerosis resulting from welfare dependency. Trollopy self absorbed mothers and the resulting feral upbringing.
Nick
Oh ...well done with the Brit-speak, not a bad effort at all.
Nick
DYork, I must say that was a masterpiece in the field of Whiskey parody. I really love the fact you managed to tie in Whiskey's alpha/beta general theory with his foreign policy views and even threw in a reference to "The Road Warrior" and Gary Coleman and "Webster", as alpha males. I laughed out loud.
I have written a few crude Whiskey parodies myself (thus my pseudonym) and even that Lord Humungus "Walk Away" post about Libya and Steve's 1998 Honda Accord, but yours was just brilliant.
Also, I should give credit to Kudzu Bob, who probably wrote the urtext of this rapidly emerging genre of modern literature.
Actually I think the trashification of a large section of the English working class has some other, deeper roots.
It really became apparent in the post WW2 period, and in particular post 1960, the apotheosis being in the 1970s to present.I am of the opinion that the upper classes (England was to all intents and purposes a feudal society way past the middle ages and into modern times, in the sense that class stratification was real and rigidly enforced), simply lost their nerve and their authority some time in the 1960s - it was probably the Labour governments of Harold Wilson that did it and the liberal Home Secretary Roy Jenkins, that were the decisive factors.In those days class warfare as seen in commie run unions and mass strikes was real and apparent.
Also at that time great societal changes ripped the heart out of traditional England.Mass third world immigration angered and diorientated the English like nothing else.'Liberal' thinking abolished the death penalty and massively reduced prison sentences, the British establishment as represented by the C of E lost any grip it ever had.There was general breakdown of order and crucially of respect.
Also not to be forgotten is the rise of chavdom really got under way post oil crisis of 1973.In the days of fullemployment and general prosperity previous, chavdom never really existed.
Ted Heath's humiliation by the miners, Callaghan's failure and crisis, the savage and cruel mass Thatcher unemployment and discarding of whole populations - all these just bred an anger, a hatred and a cynicism in the bones of many working class English.It was expressed in a hatred and contempt of virtually everything, politics, religion, civil society.The people who were shat upon fought back in their own way.Quite rightly and rationally the thought of politics, religion, the British state and society etc as just a complete stinking pile of shit.All they cared about was they personally could get out of it.
It is entirely a rational response and a justified response.Thatcher bred this Clockwork Orange, Lord of he Flies type atomised, disengaged, dystopia and she reaped the whirlwind.
"The welfare state on its own doesn't do it - the welfare state started in 1946": no it didn't. Jeeze, if you can't even get that right....
"In those days class warfare as seen in commie run unions and mass strikes was real and apparent."
This point invalidates the rest of what you said. You're right there was a lot of strikes and class-based industrial conflict which culminated in the miner's strike in 1984-1985 but that very conflict was the product of a very socialist but also very strongly cohesive and extremely socially conservative working class population.
There were lots of commies in the mining towns but no chavs.
The social collapse happened after the breaking of the unions and the loss of millions of industrial jobs from the 1980s onwards. Before that point the patriarchal industrial working class culture held the 60s culture at bay.
(Obviously the previous semi-commie - actually more medieval guild-like - culture had a lot of flaws from an economic point of view but it was mostly still culturally healthy.)
Brilliant point. Sums up what I've been thinking for a while, but couldn't get into words.
"One reason for the rot is maybe Anglo culture of individualism. Continental Europeans are more communal-minded whereas Anglos, especially with infusion of American pop culture, are more individualistic. In the past, Anglo individualism was balanced by hierarchy, class, and values, but all those things are gone.
So, all that is left is individualism without direction or values. If there were no welfare state, individuals would at least learn to be responsible, save, and take care of themselves. But with welfare state, we have something like nanny state individualism: people who never grow up and take responsibility but act like spoiled little kids throwing tantrums."
...want nothing more than to serve the growing Alpha, bad boy Muslim overlords of Europe...
Be careful there - you're accidentally stumbling upon the truth.
Bourbon said: I have written a few crude Whiskey parodies myself (thus my pseudonym) and even that Lord Humungus "Walk Away" post about Libya and Steve's 1998 Honda Accord, but yours was just brilliant.
Hunsdon replied: I for one always appreciate a good Lord Humungus reference. You underrate yourself.
steve yobs said: In the past, white elites felt culturally, historically, racially, and spiritually connected to the rest of the population. So, they admonished the lower elements; they led the masses to the higher path; they created national/patriotic/communal culture for all the people to share.
Hunsdon replied: Ding ding ding ding! We have a winner. Noblesse oblige can be presented as a bad thing, as condescension---but so many things can be presented badly.
In the military there is (or used to be) the expression "the chain runs both ways," referring to the chain of command. The other ranks had a duty to obey NCOs and officers, but the NCOs and officers had a duty to look out for the other ranks.
In today's general population, the chain does not run both ways. The elites feel no obligation to the common herd, and the common herd feel none to the elites.
Anonydroid said: Unlike new capitalist elites who rose by success in business or some demanding field, old elites maintained power by blood lineage and connections. Consider the film THE SERVANT. The aristocrat guy is a real dumbass. Indeed, his servant is smarter and understands power more than him.
Hunsdon replied: You're new here, right?
Stop making fun of Whiskey. I like his writing. He's a good blogger. Leave him alone.
One of the interesting things about Keynes and Keynesians is that Keynes never thought of his economic philosophy/ideology as being an engine of economic growth and advancement. That was an American twist on it, like how Americans prettied up Freudian psychology from it's original almost Frankenstein form to more in line with American's inherent cock eyed optimism. Keynes thought that the great era of economic growth starting in the late 18th century and continuing up until 1914 was over. Keynesian proscriptions were designed for a world economy whose best years were behind it, that's why eugenics was so important to Keynes and why he spent most of the war as President of the Eugenics Society. Another fascinating fact about Keynes was his casual racism about black people, he used the n-word casually in everyday conversation and correspondence. What would Krugman and the NYT say if that fact had become widely known?
It is entirely a rational response and a justified response.Thatcher bred this Clockwork Orange, Lord of he Flies type atomised, disengaged, dystopia and she reaped the whirlwind.
Thatcher Americanized Britain.
If dumb people aren't allowed to breed and smart people don't breed anywhere in the amounts needed to replace themselves (JM Keynes of course had no children) then this planet is going to be depopulated, no?
Britain has had an underclass problem for centuries. In the 17th century the London underclass was sent to the new Virginia colony as indentured servants. The mortality rate was so high that the Virginia elite eventually switched to West African slaves to staff the plantations. In the 19th century Britain established a penal colony in Australia as a method for booting out its poor behaving population. In the 20th century the welfare state in conjunction with eugenics became the fashionable way for dealing with Britain's socioeconomic issues.
The American right need to think beyond politics. GOP is the political arm of conservatism(rather useless as it's controlled by Wall Street sharks, neocons, and southern fundie Christian dummies), but society is more than politics. It is culture. We need to launch a rightwing cultural revolution, and we don't need politics to do it. We don't even need the universities; in this age of the internet, we can trade information and ideas OUTSIDE the university.
We just need clubs, societies, and organizations(real and not just online): for youths, women, men, elders, etc. Since boy scouts and girl scouts got all PC, white cons should come up with separate clubs. This can start in smaller communities but grow into larger communities. And there could be meeting places for conservative old-timers. Even within the white right, people like to meet and associate according to age, sex, interests, hobbies, etc. Conservatives in their 60s wanna be with men of their own generation, and young cons wanna be with young conservatives.
There is the Church, but the scope of religion is limited, and besides, Christianity teaches universalism at its core, which is why Evangelicals and Mormons go out of their way to show they are NOT racial. (On the matter of religion, we need a kind of Critical Christianity or a kind of Christian Realism, an ideology that reminds that all ideas--spiritual, ideological, etc--need to be understood and practiced as a form of culturalism, i.e. Russian communism couldn't be same as Chinese communism, etc, and Black Church isn't same as White Church, and Muslim understanding of Allah isn't same as Christian understanding of Jehovah, which differs from Jewish conception of Yahweh.)
We need culture clubs and organizations, regular meeting places where people don't just exchange opinions but each other's presences. Religion is powerful not only because of doctrine but regular meeting rituals which create real social bonds(often leading to marriage and breeding more of the same kind). To create a new right, we need rightwing clubs where people regularly get together. We need local chapters all over--and we need to keep out the nazi and kkk scum who give the right a bad name.
Through such clubs, rightwing ideas will become more mainstream and acceptable. Media tells people that rightwing whites are monsters but if people get together with REAL rightwing whites and find out they are human beings, then there will be a stronger sense of whiteness.
So, just as Mao called forth the Cultural Revolution alongside the Political and Economic one, we need a cultural revolution too. Of course, Mao did it stupidly and horribly, but we can do it intelligently and effectively--just like liberals and leftists with their long march through institutions and control of pop culture for the sake of 'progressivism'.
"Old Britain" [The Browning Version, 1951]
Yes, well, but the rot had already set in long before. The acting profession attracts people quite rightly not considered respectable in earlier eras.
Michael Redgrave was the son of actors and sired the luminous but execrable Vanessa. He was not only appointed CBE but knighted. All wrong on so many levels.
Genetic change cannot be significantly responsible for whatever has happened to the British working class. There simply has not been enough time.
You know... when Americans moved westward and new territories, they were cut off from the civilized center/centers. So, there was the danger of such people become wild, barbaric, and even savage--and so the myth of the Mountain Men arose; some might even go 'indian'.
So, it was important for even the most cut-off family in new territories to have the Bible--even if the folks couldn't read. The mere feel of Bible in one's hand made them feel connected to the source of Truth, Order, and such.
And it is why so many new communities in frontier towns were eager to bring in schools, churches, lawmen, and etc from civilized centers. Cuz if they didn't, the town could be taken over by Lee Marvins of the world(as in MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE). Worse, even good folks might start acting like Lee Marvin. (I love Lee Marvin, but he made great heavies.) Budd Boetticher Westerns remind us how thin the line is between civilized and barbaric, morality and evility, such and such.
And so, new frontier towns became civilized too in time and became connected to the center in law, culture, and etc. Sure, there were saloons and whorehouses, but there were forces of order and civility to counterbalance them. Virtue for every vice. And there was the lawman who, though a man of violence, sided with good peaceable folks.
So, traditionally, the center was the fountain-spring from which the water of order, morality, and civilization flowed to wilder territories. How did the center become the feeder of poison and pollution?
Today, even the smallest town or outpost is connected to the center via satellite and internet, but what flows from the center to outlying areas: 'gay marriage', Lady Gaga, porn, ugly video games, foul TV shows like 'family guy', MTV, rap music, slut fashion for little girls, and etc.
Of course, there's political correctness as new morality pushed from the center and spreading out all over all, but its message if not pro-virtue but pro-vice. It doesn't teach people to judge morally but teaches them to tolerate immorality.
In racial terms, PC teaches us to celebrate blacks, gays, and Jews the most, but the problem is that most of modern immorality comes from those communities: rap, gangster culture, porn, MTV, 'gay lifestyles', snarky humor, etc.
Racial and religious tolerance is a good thing, but what if certain races and religious/ethnic groups need to be admonished for their excesses, hostilities, and ugliness? Tolerance doesn't preclude judgment. We tolerated Germans and Japanese after WWII but we condemned what they did in the war. Tolerance shouldn't be absolute-ized into full acceptance. It has to be conditional and mutual. But PC tolerance forces us to not only tolerate but accept and celebrate everything that is black, Jewish, and gays, though those groups have done most to undermine moral values in this country; also, Jews, blacks, and gays don't have to show any regard or respect for the culture of straight white gentiles.
To be sure, Jews/blacks/gays were historically the victims of the immorality of white/straight/gentile bigotry, but they deserved to win a measure of tolerance and acceptance. But this should have been conditional, i.e. they would be accepted if they acted decently.
But iron-fisted PC tells us Jews, blacks, and gays can do no wrong. Even as Israel has 100 nukes and controls US foreign policy, we have to see Jews as helpless victims whom we must support 100%, even if that means Christian white boys dying in the Middle East(and killing 100,000s of Muslims). Even as blacks beat up whites, we are to see blacks are helpless social victims who need more of our money and love. Even as gays spread HIV, we are see them as victims of a gay holocaust really caused by our 'criminal neglect'. Of course, some conservatives didn't neglect gays but told them TO BE CAREFUL WITH WANTON GAY SEX, but did gays listen? No, and so many died, but we got blamed anyway.
Fish rots from the head.
The Bloomsbury-type British elite has done more damage to Great Britain than all the Yob hordes.
It could be the only difference between present and past is UK has lot of yobs whereas in the past they were yobbits.
Yob is basically a yobbit without the bit of hobbity social/moral restraints. However, yobbits too were a brutish lot--in many ways, worse. Just watch movies like GREAT EXPECTATIONS(by David Lean) and Catherine Cookson tv movies. But why were yobbits somewhat better behaved? Fear, inferiority complex, and ignorance(and also men back then had more social/legal/moral power over women and children). Though upper crust British society seemed refined, well-mannered, and gentlemanly on the surface, it used extreme force to keep the masses under control. People were summarily executed(as in GREAT EXPECATIONS)or sent to penal colonies. The old bugger in GREAT EXPECTATIONS is one mean dude, but he really fears the authorities. The old rich woman Havisham looks kindly and all, but she is one nasty mean bitch who will do anything to serve her vanity. When Pip becomes a gentleman, he begins to turn up his nose at his old friend. Since yobbits feared the upper classes who controlled the ruthless arm of the law, they had to maintain at least the appearance of decency(at least when 'better folks' were around). Also, in their sheer ignorance, they believed in God and Hell and all that; and so church authorities could control them more. And even as they resented the upper classes, they wanted to be like them and to be liked by them, and so yobbits tried to imitate better folks, as in having tea and crumpets. (Maybe it also helped in England that Anglos were of less of a musical culture than Germans or Italians. Music is more aggressive and irrational; since Anglos were more literary than musical, they were traditionally more 'sober'. So, when music, via Rock, came to UK, it was like liquor coming to Indians. Brits didn't know how to handle its power and fell head-over-heels into rock music addiction, just like Indians just went crazy with liquor and became alcoholics.)
But in material terms, the world of yobbits could be horrible in old and industrial England of 19th century. There were lots of crime, grime, and life as pretty cruddy. Yobbits were somewhere between tadpoles and toads. But when yobbits lost their tails and become full-scale yob toads, they crawled up on land and began to hop around and make a lot of noise without shame. Without the ruthless use of law to keep them down, without the power of Church and ignorant fears of God and Hell, without power of men over women and children, and without social respect for upper classes(and without shame for acting like louts), yobs could fully yobbicious.
But something similar could be seen in Chinese history/culture. Though Mao is most to blame for the Cultural Revolution, much of the violence was a natural outflow of pent-up mass brutishness and rage. For 1000s of yrs, the Chinese elites has acted like refined gentleman literati class into good grace, manners, learning, and etc. But this order had been maintained through ruthless, cruel, and wanton violence and monopolization of law by upper crust. People who got out of line were killed on the spot--and maybe their families too. If thieves in Old Britain got their arms cut off or publicly tortured or hanged, Chinese maybe got it even worse. Since the poor, ignorant, and powerless masses couldn't overthrow the upper classes, they had no choice but to accept the elites as superior and something to aspire to. But in fact, the lives of most Chinese was really brutal and barbaric. They couldn't afford no silk dress and porcelain tea cups. They were chibbits, the Chinese version of yobbits. Though barbaric and crude, they still respected the ruthless elite-dominated order and even respected its values/ideology since they didn't know anything different. But when Mao allowed the chibbits to run free as chibs, the Chinese youths just went wild. It was like 1000 yrs of pent-up rage and frustration was released, and it attacked teachers, scholars, intellectuals, 'class enemies', etc.
But Chinese government still had sufficient power to beat down the Red Guard chibs when things got too out of order, and so there was the rise of New Orderly China under Deng.
This is true of Japan too. Imamura said he made movies about lower half of Japan and lower half of the body. Though we like to think of Japan as flower arrangement and zen gardens, most Japanese through history never had any of that. They were more like the farmers in SEVEN SAMURAI or BALLAD OF NARAYAMA. A bunch of Jabbits. They were wild, crude, and uncouth. In contrast, the upper crust Japanese were cultured, refined, well-mannered, etc. But, this 'civilized' surface at the top could be maintained only be ruthless control of the masses. If a peasant didn't bow, he'd have his head chopped off or his body would be used as target-practice for samurai with swords. Because the dirty and uncouth jabbits feared and respected the upper crust, they remained relative orderly(at least when officials were around). But when unleashed on Asia, jabbits became full-scale jabs and went around raping and pillaging.
"Does the mainstream really consider it more humane to let an addict leave a new severally disabled baby in the hospital every year, than to tie the addict's tubes without her consent after, oh I don't know, the little victim #3?"
I'll never forget an interview I saw (maybe on "Sixty Minutes"?) 20+ years ago. A couple had adopted a girl who was severely deformed as a result of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. She was maybe 8 or 10, so severely retarded that not only could she not speak, she was totally non-responsive, basically a vegetable. She was blind, deaf and incontinent and slept in a large crib.
Her adoptive parents were all upset because she also had a heart defect that meant without surgery, she was unlikely to live past the age of 12. They were appealing to public opinion to help them get the government to pay for this surgery. This was not merely a child lacking in intelligence but one who had never expressed any emotion, other than that of pain. She literally was not conscious in any sense beyond that of being able to feel physical pain.
Frankly, I think her adoptive parents were in their own way, as defective as she was.
And same could be said for Old France. French elites were the most cultured, more fancy pantsy, and all that. But the King and French nobles could afford to be so fancy, refined, and etc by squeezing the peasants who remained stinking poor, dirty, and crude. (Even in the late 19th century, French working classes were a wild bunch, as in Zola's GERMINAL: great book, lousy movie.) French Revolution unleashed the Frebbits into Frebs, who ran loose and caused all sorts of havoc. Even so, the revolutionary government became the new ruthless ruling force, and indeed most of the victims of Reign of Terror were Frebs--of working class or peasant origins--who ran wild and looted and did such things. The Old order was smashed but New order also had strong values and laws, not to be messed with. From Wiki: "Victims of the Reign of Terror totaled somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000. According to one estimate, among those condemned by the revolutionary tribunals, about 8 percent were aristocrats, 6 percent clergy, 14 percent middle class, and 70 percent were workers or peasants accused of hoarding, evading the draft, desertion, rebellion, and other purported crimes."
But things are different now where the government has less power to really clamp down on mob violence. If the London Riots had happened in the 19th century, soldiers would have been sent into shoot a whole bunch of looters and blacks would have been sent back to Africa. But government just lets the fires burn out. The riots ended not because of use of force but because yobs felt they did enough stealing. Once you steal video games, you wanna stay home and play the stuff.
Anonymous 2/10/12 9:06's link to Old Britain is a movie, The Browning Version.
It is a thinly veiled gay message movie.
Update it by naming the Crocker-Harris character's disease as AIDS, and it would still work today.
It is extremely poignant, but in a Bronski Beat way.
I'm not sure it paints a picture of a great age, but I'm glad I linked to it (the whole movie is on YouTube) because the dialogue and acting are amazing.
One problem with liberal elites is they spend most of their time with fellow elites, and so their in-person-experience with 'oppression' and 'injustice' is with other people of privilege, i.e. people even more privileged than they are. Since they don't have to deal with yobs or afrobs on a person-to-person basis, they don't develop personal fears or animosity toward the lower orders. Politics is largely personal, i.e. Jews not allowed into Wasp golf clubs harbor far great hostility to wasps than to black robbers and thugs.
Since for liberal elites, the yobs and Afrobs are not real people who pose real danger to their lives, they are seen symbolically as 'fellow brothers and sisters against injustice'. So, if a liberal elite member making 100,000 pounds a year feels 'oppressed' by one making million pounds a year, he symbolically may identify with the lower masses as 'fellow oppressed'. This is why we need Section 8 Housing to build projects in the heart of liberal affluent communities. Let them experience black problems personally than just symbolically.
Britain used to export people, sometimes coercively, to other parts of the world. Maybe that acted as a relief valve of sorts. Perhaps the chav types feel they have no foreseeable future, no connection to the past, only a present that they slog through daily by getting high and amusing themselves with whatever low-grade drama they can create.
haha oh my GOODNESS. as if by magic. doubt there could possibly be a more germane occurence to the topic! british guy gets kicked out of pub for smoking, returns with chainsaw.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anQ0GYoykqg
the best part is how when the guy with the chainsaw rolls in, there's already a completely unrelated fist fight going down in the pub at about 0:24 in the video.
england is doomed.
"A century ago many leading leftists subscribed to the vile pseudo-science of eugenics, writes Dennis Sewell, and the influence of that thinking can still be seen today..."
I wonder how many of the great and good who denounce the "vile pseudo-science of eugenics" realize that everything they eat is the result of a kind of eugenics.
This article is another in a long line of neo-con white-washes which attempts to label everything that is bad as leftist (Eugenics? Naziism? All the work of bolsheviks! ) Without noticing that eugenics had many adherants on the right, and that naziism was substantially more right-wing than left-wing.
"The most likely reason Keynes stopped giving pro-eugenics speeches after 1946 was because he was dead."
In the long run ............ John Maynard Keynes is dead.
It is interesting to learn that Keynes, Beveridge, and many other architects of the british welfare state were believers in eugenics and thought that eugenics was absoutely necessary to insure its success. As a reactionary, while I would agree that eugenics is necessary for the continued maintenance of a welfare-state, my distaste for eugenics leads me to the conclusion that it is better to just abandon the welfare-state, and let the genes fall where they may. Such a regime - the norm throughout most of human history - is at least not too dysgenic.
"Anonymous said...
Poofters are also not popular among Australian professors of philosophy."
No Poofters!
After reading through many comments, isn't the removal of the welfare state the obvious answer?
No need to impose eugenics and all its creepiness, just quit subsidising bad behavior.
FrankC
Perhaps what we are seeing is a return to Gin Lane?
Another anonymous writer alluded to Anglo-Saxon Individualism. I think that is key, for centuries the lower-classes in the British isles have been subjected to a system of atomization, with absolutely nothing standing between them and the State and extreme capitalism for centuries. The old communal bonds of village and clan were attacked, either by fiat- only the king gets the right of blood vengeance, or by economics: Enclosure Movement, Highland Clearances, Irish famines.
The same forces that created individualism and the old-fashioned Anglo-American bourgeois society many commentators pine for also created the chavs of ages past.
They aren't a strange breed of alien that appeared from nowhere, and if we consider that in ages past slaves and serfs had poor fertility, we must assume that amongst the ancestors of chavs, past and present, were more than a few "sturdy peasants", or the industrial version thereof, or even gentry.
I'll allow that perhaps prol babies stand a better chance of surviving, but even there, the most prolific welfare queen is not breeding like a Russian or French Canadian peasant, or colonial New Englander. Demographic expansion is not driving the increase of chavs. Some of the hand-wringing about prol's expanding resembles Tudor era confusion about where all those vagabonds were coming from. Hint: it had more to do with sheep than s&x. The US and the UK are de-industrialized countries, that is crucial to understanding the rise of the chav.
Referring to the US, in my own area, I've seen families, whose ancestors were wealthy, degenerate into white trash. And I don't mean working class trying to keep it together, I mean illegitimacy, casual work, ebonics and people whose appellation is something on the order of RayRay. The decline is almost Lovecraftian in its scope. I'm still not sure what the explanation is. Perhaps the absorption of bad genes as a family declines, poor choices, and external economic patterns. Of course, none of these factors can be taken in isolation. A loss in wealth caused by external factors can lead to poor choices, leading to reduced circumstances for the next generation and poor marriage choices. In any event, watch out who your kids socialize with. Snobbery in their interests is perfectly ok.
Emile Zola, more so than any other novelist, who understood the causes of degeneracy in the working class. He remains so timely to our current problems, I'm rereading Fortune des Rougon, L'Assommoir and Ventre de Paris.
Zola's characters were affected by the interplay of heredity, external political events, economic and cultural factors and poor choices. As someone from an impoverished area, where things are getting worse on a cultural and economic front, Zola resonates with me.
Same anonymous as above, who wrote about the decline of formerly elite families into hip-hoppy, rural excellence.
I should add the counter-example. Currently, some of the wealthiest men in the county are men whose grandfathers were day laborers and tenant farmers. These men didn't just rise by dint of their own labors, many benefited from post-WW2 economic fields opened up by Federal spending- particularly construction.
Without these external stimuli, many of these guys would have been frustrated. And that wouldn't have been a bad thing, necessarily; a lot of these fellows were aggressive, sharp dealers, whose actions bordered on the illegal, if rumors are true. If one had to transact with folks, better to deal with an honest, but lazy grandson of a wealthy farmer.
There may be something here akin to what Paul Gottfried has written about WASP and their loss of self-confidence and subsequent decline in the face of aggressive upstarts. Kind of sounds Ibn Khaldun or Robert E. Howard-esque as well. Thomas Hardy also wrote about rich families fallen into decadence and ignorance of their former status. As a paleocon, I can tell you I find it all very distasteful.
My point is, be careful before you ascribe too much genetic difference to a chav or lower-class continuity amongst his ancestors. Check his surname or his family tree. You might be surprised.
I am a Norwegian, and have noticed that the only British class that exclude us, is the underclass.
The middle and upper classes on the other hand, tend to treat us better than they would one of their own.
There are probably many explanations that can be given for this phenomena, but one few is willing to talk about, even the British themselves, is the race issue.
To simplify it, the upper classes are Scandinavian i origin, while the underclass is the indigenous one, whereas the middle class is mixed.
That the British class system in many ways reflect racial divides, explains both the fervent acceptance of denial of race, and the hatred you find between the classes.
To start with the denial of race, the British (Russian, German, French, USA?) state needed it first to win WW1, then to win WW2, and finally to win the cold war.
If you want people to die for your cause, you don't try to sell them the truth about you dying for some foreign upper class, that in the best case think of you as no better than animals on a farm, and in the worst as genetic competitors, destined for extermination.
What you try to sell, is that we are all one people...
On a side note, you find the same pattern of reverse racism in France, Germany, Russia, Switzerland, Spain, Italy etc, where most people don't even know that there are a racial hierarchy within their of class structure.
For instance, when I used to live in Germany as an exchange student, it was always the Scandinavian who was sent or brought along to talk with some German official or landlord.
I did not understand it at the time, but they were of course projecting their prejudices about Scandinavians onto the German official, and thought that she/he would would rather believe me than them.
One a personal note, the friendships I made with southern Europeans in Germany, made me understand that they are in many ways correct about their prejudices. If you want something done without considerations, hire a Scandinavian.
To continue, I really admired how my Spanish friends prioritized friendship before business, but I also saw it's drawbacks, with having to wait an hour at a subway station, because the Spanish could not leave without their late friends, so they all needed to wait for the next train. That there was somebody waiting for them, never seemed to strife their minds.
In many ways, for us Scandinavians, non-Scandinavians are like children, and not the other way around, as they never think about how the societal consequences would be of their actions, if everybody behaved like them.
Haha hilarious.
Yet, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Germany, Finland, and Japan all have generous, far more extensive Welfare states, and are not over-run with Chavs or Yobs. If it was the welfare state plus the failure of Eugenics, why then weren't those places over-run with the sort of Chav that infests Britain?
The answer is indeed White female preference for men, absent former controlling factors such as shame/social pressure (much larger in the former countries thus the differential), aided by the pill and the condom, anonymous urban living, and rising income. Women don't have to moderate desire, and can choose for sexiness.
Something Sailer here has noted extensively among the West African matriarchy. Men are the best singers, dancers, fighters, compete on that basis, women have several fathers for their several children, and do all the work. Roissy, Devlin, and even Larry Auster have come to similar conclusions here.
[Yes White women on the whole prefer Tall Dark and Handsome as Sailer noted extensively, while men of all races prefer fair maidens. Gee globalization penalizes some in the sex/mate market: Asian men, Black women, to some extent White guys; and rewards others: Asian women, Black men, to some extent White women. What part of comparative advantage is hard to understand? Or do you hold that all races have equal attractiveness across both men and women? As for Israel and the ME, women are biased against war/violence, in which they lose and gain little. That comes out pretty much a wash save for the bias for PC/Multiculturalism amongst women.]
My main criticism here is that Steve ignores the role technology plays in women's selection of men, and the reward system. Scandi nations suffer the same inputs, have radically different outputs, mostly because shame/social pressure puts a lid on bad-boy/yob/chav chasing. That's the upside of the famous Nordic social unity that is as powerful as Japan's or Korea's.
I'm sympathetic to the idea allowing the least productive to reproduce without check is probably a bad idea, but I can't imagine just two or three generations would do this kind of damage.
A more likely explanation is a whole lot of people will follow the path of least resistance, and the British welfare state provides the lazy a path of indolence that wasn't available to their ancestors.
It's not so hard to imagine the same guy who's demanding to know what you're looking at during the early afternoon in a dive bar could have been a productive member of society if he'd been forced to. The irony being, of course, that if he had been he'd be grumbling about just the sort of person he is.
"After reading through many comments, isn't the removal of the welfare state the obvious answer?
No need to impose eugenics and all its creepiness, just quit subsidising bad behavior."
Welfare went from helping those really IN NEED to being a way of life based on RIGHTS.
Also, what had prevented people from going on welfare was shame and stigma attached to it. Some Chinese guy who owns a carryout joint told me there's welfare system in HK but many don't use it cuz it's associated with social shame.
It's like going bankrupt was once shameful but now there's no shame involved. If anything, bankrupt people are treated as victims in need of help.
When there was no more shame attached with welfare, it became a lifestyle choice for many lower class people. (And degenerate pop culture for dummies made things even worse, with young people imitating punk and rap styles.) Even so, there can't be much pride in living off the government dole. Though outwardly shameless, many yobs may actually feel a repressed shame. So, maybe chavs or yobs feel a need to assert themselves by exaggerated violence. Since they are economically wards of the state, they can only feel free and independent through thuggery. It's like a whole bunch of 60s kids really depended on allowances of parents, and so they sought to demonstrate their freedom through stupid druggy hippie behavior.
Also, it seems nations offered welfare in the past out of decency and compassion. But once it created a dependent underclass and a massive bureaucracy around it, politicians supported it out of fear. It began as a way to feed a tiger/bear cub, but then the tiger/bear grew big and there was no choice but to keep feeding it(cuz it might act wild and violent).
Another thing...
It's like drug use.
If someone uses drugs and becomes an addict, the solution is stop giving him drugs. But taking away the drugs makes him go crazy(at least for awhile).
The logical thing is to say, 'drug abuse made him like this', but liberals will say, 'taking away the drug makes him crazy'. Of course, the liberals are right in the sense that the immediate cause of cold turkey madness was removal of the drugs. But liberals seem to ignore the larger problem that the person got addicted to drugs in the first place.
Welfare was corrupted by being made into a right than a need. It went from helping the unfortunate innocents to providing free stuff for people truly guilty of laziness, criminality, moronic-ness.
But British unions are also to blame. They made it difficult for companies to hire/fire people, to invest in innovation and new equipment since most of the money was eaten up by workers' benefits. Once UK manufacturing become noncompetitive as a result, it was only a matter of time before many British industries would go under and many jobs would be lost.
To summarize this comments section and the later half of the 20th century: Angry white males complaining about the loss of power and privilege they assume they all richly deserve(d).
Do we keep sterilizing the bottom IQs of successive generations? First they came for the 80s, but I wasn't an 80...
It just seems that the goal is Lake Wobegone where all the children are above average.
And the Eugenicists think us Catholics are kooky. I will die alone and I will be judged and I will have no attorney. Makes me consider my behavior.
Forgive me my superstitions, but what the hell, they don't affect you.
IQ is a great tool for guiding people in careers, education, etc. but its applications are not unlimited.
There is violence arising from authortarianism, and there is violence arising from permissiveness.
Children of mean abusive parents may behave well in the presence of authority, but they could be bruised up inside emotionally. And so when they have the chance to push people around, they can be nasty buggers. In the Soviet Union, soldiers were obedient to superiors--out of fear/awe/terror--but they often abused others below them. Irish were like this too. Drunken Irish father would beat up kids, and kids would be well-behaved in front of authority figures. But on their own, the kids could be really nasty to one another and weaker kids.
Same with Japanese bullying. Japanese behave at home and before teachers, but they beat up weaker kids at school.
People who grow up under authoritarian violence--familial, social, or political--can be well-behaved but there needs to be a repressive social order(with muscle behind it)to ensure that their repressed anger/violence remains mostly checked. If it must be released, it is allowed to be let loose on social inferiors; thus, social order is maintained. After all, if students are abused/beaten by teachers, and if emotionally bruised students bully other students, social order is still gonna be maintained. But if students attack the teachers, the source of social authority, then social order itself will fall. Similarly, if a soldier abused by officers goes home and beats up his wife/children, it's awful but social order is still maintained since there is still system of hierarchy; social order will fail if the soldier strikes the superior officer since that is an attack on the structure of social order itself. (Thus, traditionally, mankind felt it only had two options: abusive repression that maintained order AND freedom that led to social chaos. Tyranny was bad but kept order. Freedom was good but it led to chaos. Since order is better than chaos, tyranny generally prevailed over freedom. The greatest political invention of man was authoritativeness as opposed to authoritarianness. In Psychology 101, we are told authoritarian parenting is where parents rule with raw power and permissive parenting is where parents just let kids run loose. Both are problematic. In contrast, authoritative parenting means parents have the power but set down clear rules for the kids and also live up to the rules themselves. This way, a family/people can have both order and freedom. But this balance isn't easy to formulate, and the West seems to be failing today with too much permissiveness socially and culturally.)
Repressed anger under authoritarian order/system can really explode. Internally terrorized kids/people need some kind of outlet. This may explain Chinese cruelty to animals. Chinese, battered by the system they must submit to, must take out their inner anger on something, and there are dogs and cats. And in Nanking, repressed Japanese violence exploded on Chinese civilians.
Violence resulting from permissiveness may not be as potent as repressed violence. Since a permissive society allows freer expression, one isn't suppressed/abused by authority figures, nor does one have to repress one's inner anger. One can be angry any time and say nasty things and be a lout. So, it's a freer and more natural kind of violence and aggression.
But in a permissive society, there is an excess of it. Paradoxically, an overly permissive order can produce excessive violence that leads to repressed violence. While kids who commit permissive violence may not be under the thumb of repressive authorities, they bully others and create a climate of fear and terror. So, defacto authoritarian figures arise in the form of thugs in the permissive order. Thus, permissive order turns tyrannical. People become afraid of bullies, thugs, thieves, burglars, robbers, rapists, etc.
Not all permissive violence is the same. Stronger/tougher guys have greater opportunity to release their violence. In the permissive violence of the London Riots, some chavs had to bow down to tougher kids. This sort of thing, in time, creates explosive repressed violence. It's like animals run free but live in a climate of constant fear. Given the nature of animals/man, freedom leads to feardom, which leads to repression, and then repressed violence.
Given the social system of old Britain where parents, teachers, and other authority figures often physically and emotionally abused children and lower orders, it could be that the origins of modern British social violence was the rebellion/release of repressed anger. So, there was the Angry Young Man movies of the late 50s and 60s. But once UK became more socially liberal and tolerant, the violence became more permissive. It was less a case of rebellion and more like what one sees in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. Violence for fun-sake. Not violence as angry statement but violence as play and celebration.
But as violence took over society, a thugocracy arose, and now many British kids came to be abused by thugs, louts, gangsters, blacks, etc. Since so many kids have been bruised by 'permissive violence', they built up a lot of anger inside, which turned into repressed violence--not much different than repressed violence under the old order.
From permissive violence, it's led back to repressed violence; and repressed violence has a way of exploding. Political Correctness also plays a role in repressing violence. But in repressing justifiable anger of white Britons who are being dispossessed, it may also lead to explosive violence of those who feel abused and beaten by the system.
"Anonymous 2/10/12 9:06's link to Old Britain is a movie, The Browning Version...
I'm not sure it paints a picture of a great age, but I'm glad I linked to it (the whole movie is on YouTube) because the dialogue and acting are amazing."
I didn't say it did. It is a really depressing film and socially very critical. But there was hierarchy and order, however grim and dreary it may have been.
"Poor" is a relative term in the US and England. Nobody misses a meal. Everybody has a bathroom and shoes. Bad behavior is a moral issue.
The lower classes are envious.
The upper classes are loyal to their shareholders. They have little concern whether the job titles that used to give the lowers an identity are off-shored or given to immigrants.
The classes are divorced and the uppers are paying alimony, and the lowers are sticking it to the ex.
"One reason for the rot is maybe Anglo culture of individualism. Continental Europeans are more communal-minded whereas Anglos, especially with infusion of American pop culture, are more individualistic. In the past, Anglo individualism was balanced by hierarchy, class, and values, but all those things are gone."
I think this is the key point, regardless of whether it was the more traditional conservative culture or the more union-based but still socially conservative culture there were two solid bulwarks against both welfare dependency and the corrupting influences of the media and academia.
The union culture was broken in the 80s and the collapse since then has been very rapid because in an individualist culture the extended family doesn't provide as much of a shield against external influences as it does in more communal cultures.
///
"Britain has had an underclass problem for centuries."
Had an underclass problem, solved it for 100 years and now have it back again.
///
"When there was no more shame attached with welfare, it became a lifestyle choice for many lower class people."
This. The shame only went away with mass unemployment in the 1980s. Before that peer pressure from the rest of the street going out to work prevented the drift towards welfare dependency.
///
"To summarize this comments section and the later half of the 20th century: Angry white males complaining about the loss of power and privilege they assume they all richly deserve(d)."
To summarize the entirety of Jewish history: angry Jews complaining about the loss of power and privilige they assume they all richly deserve(d).
"...want nothing more than to serve the growing Alpha, bad boy Muslim overlords of Europe..."
A fifty-strong Pakistani paedophile ring is currently on trial in Liverpool with a full media blackout.
gcochran
"Genetic change cannot be significantly responsible for whatever has happened to the British working class. There simply has not been enough time."
I agree generally of course however i wonder about something very specific.
(If you spend a lot of time focused on the extreme end of a spectrum your view may become distorted so maybe add a pinch or two of salt to my theory.)
Some premises
- two identical housing projects / estates with n people living on each
- one is full of ethnic group A the other ethnic group B
- there's a genetic killer trait (or something that acts as a rough proxy for it)
- 6% of group A have this trait
- group B have only a 1% residual level of this trait
- for n people there is one particularly nasty incident (PNI) per 1% frequency of this trait per year so the group A project has six PNIs a year and the group B estate has one PNI a year
- group A are welfare underclass. group B recently switched from working class to underclass when their factory was offshored
The welfare underclass is an environment. How do the males compete for females in that environment?
(Here you have to add in the context that there is no rule of law in underclass environments. Most of the victims of underclass crime are also underclass so the political consensus, thanks to media silence over the true state of reality, is that it's not cost-effective to put as many in prison as is neccessary to maintain the peace in those areas and instead the police should simply cordon off those areas and try and keep it contained within the cordon.)
With no rule of law, males with the killer trait can freely use violence to compete for females and it's very successful because a) normal people are instinctively scared of men like that and b) killer-types are much better at violence because they have no empathic or moral constraints. The only violence restraint they have is cost-benefit. In that kind of environment the most successful of those men can easily have three times as many children as the average male. This is especially so in group B where originally there is only the residual 1% of killer types so they have very little competition.
So assuming,
- 50% heritability
- females mostly don't express the trait but do pass it on to sons
- on average killer-types have two to three times as many kids depending on the level of competition from other killer-types within the same population
I can see the frequency of the killer trait going from 1% to 2% in one or two underclass generations (which are shorter than everyone else's imo).
The reason that this one trait is potentially so significant is that is only takes a small minority of killer males to completely dominate an area and turn it into what is effectively stateless tribal terriotory. To illustrate imagine a street of a hundred houses with six copies of Bill Sykes from Oliver Twist formed into a gang - or even only two or three - and you get the idea.
(It only takes 2-3 PNIs per year to terrify normal people and 6-8 to turn the local environment into a jungle.)
If 1-2 underclass generations is 25-30 years and the UK experiment in reverse evolution of the white working class started in the mid 80s and is starting to bear strange fruit now then i'd imagine rust belt areas in the states that were offshored in the mid-90s will follow a similar pattern in the next ten years or so.
Abandoning the rule of law in underclass areas has created an environment that very rapidly selects for the killer trait.
"...there can't be much pride in living off the government dole."
No, but there is security and the knowledge that the consequences of one's actions are divorced from receiving one's government-provided entitlements.
And for many nowadays, there is pride in getting something for nothing if you consider that as proof of your cleverness in maneuving your provider into giving you what you need without real work on your part. You don't have to do, you simply have to be.
Of course, there is shame in the same process if you consider you should give value for money and material wealth received but I suspect few if any chavs and yobs see it that way.
"Though outwardly shameless, many yobs may actually feel a repressed shame. So, maybe chavs or yobs feel a need to assert themselves by exaggerated violence."
Maybe. Or maybe they don't have a lot of impulse control anyway. And since the consequences to them of their thuggish behavior are mild to non-existent, they see little reason not to act out on their anti-social impulses.
"Since they are economically wards of the state, they can only feel free and independent through thuggery."
Since they are economically wards of the state, they know they are free to commit any thuggery they choose and they will still have all the necessities of life provided to them by the government.
Your notion of chavs and yobs as engaged in some existential meditation on the need and value of acting thuggish is piquant and even charming but also very outdated. Liberalism has long since severed the connection between responsibility and authority in the underclass. Thus, they have the "right" to demand housing, food, medical care, etc. without having to do anything to merit these things (and far more) being provided to them other than needing them.
Try reading Theodore Dalrymple's accounts of treating the poor in England. They know exactly what is "owed" them and no shame at all is attached to their knowledge.
What is it about over-achievers that makes them reproduce so little and what is it about the less intelligent that makes them so fecund?
One fascinating example of extraordinary over-achievement and very low fertility is the Parsi community of India. The more I have read about them, the more amazed I am at what they have accomplished for a people so few in number. In fact, man for man they may be the richest ethnic group in the world (if the wealth of all Parsis was simply divided by their population to get a per capita average). It would be no exaggeration to say that modern industry would not exist in India without them. To have accomplished what they have in a chaotic country which is riddled with corruption (and had nearly five decades of Soviet-style disastrous economic planning) is quite amazing. Yet their families tend to be very small and their birth rate very low.
We see the same phenomenon in the West with small communities that have historically been very productive. The British upper classes were, until the horrors of Nazism and WWII, keenly aware of the dangers of the fecund lower classes multiplying out of their proportion in the population. In fact, eugenics was not really a matter of controversy. The great and the good, whether from left, right or centre were in favour of it. Churchill was only one of many famous proponents.
Re the last paragraph - leftists are such regular liars and obfuscators.
"What is it about over-achievers that makes them reproduce so little and what is it about the less intelligent that makes them so fecund?"
It's the Jesus/Buddha Syndrome. Intelligent people are more self-aware and more thought-oriented. Since they love ideas, they don't like the fact that they are rooted in biology and made from biology. They wanna believe that they were made of/from ideas, should live with ideas/ideals, and can change the world through ideas/theories.
Sex and birth are of the flesh, animal, primitive, and etc.
Jesus, always thinking about spirit, didn't wanna be a slave of flesh, so He never had sex. Buddha also forsook the flesh and went for pure spirit.
Modern educated people tend to be less spiritual, but their idea-centric intellectualism is another version of trying to go beyond the flesh and animal desires/instincts.
Since such people have few kids, those kids grow up without 'family culture' and never develop a taste for it. Also, intellectual people tend to be less emotional parents, and so their kids bond with them less. The family may be nice and stable, but there is no powerful strong bond.
When an Italian mother dies, the poor Italian boy cries and goes mamamia. But when an affluent Swedish parent dies, there is less emotion. Look at the son in WILD STRAWBERRIES.
Too much thinking isn't good for family creation. Think less, feel more. (But feel more like a human and less like an animal. Our culture tells kids to feel like beasts.)
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